Spoilers "Superman & Lois" Season 2

I don’t think that’s what he meant. He meant there are other Earth’s out there with superheroes but their Earth still has a few besides him.

 

Read that TVLine article.

The show morphed from actually being an Arrowverse series into a separate thing that just happens to star Hoechlin and Tulloch, but the people behind it just decided to keep that info secret for nearly two seasons and haphazardly write off the show's one overt Arrowverse link - John Diggle's guest appearance - with the excuse of 'well, that was a different Diggle'.

Like I said, it's stupid, offputting, and disingenuous.

 

Todd Helbing on the reveal. He suggests Oliver Queen existed on Earth-S&L but no other powered heroes besides Superman do (as of yet).

 

Sam said, "I’ve been working for the DOD for a long time. I’ve seen things you would not believe — glimpses of other worlds, and the leagues of superheroes they have on them. And even though we only have your father on this planet, thank God that we do, because he’s the finest of any Earth."

And in the article Caretaker linked to above, Helbing says the following re: Diggle's Season 1 dialogue about Oliver:

 

I'm not seeing what the issue of this show not being on Earth-Prime is. Heck, some folks brought up the idea this show was on a different Earth during the first season. Mainly due to lack of references to the other Earth-Prime shows, costume differences, prop differences, vis effects differences (notably the Fortress of Solitude), and Morgan Edge not lining up with the Earth-38 version.

I'm also not seeing what the issue of this Earth having doppelgangers of Pre-Crisis Earth-1/Earth-Prime John Diggle and Oliver Queen is. Both Crisis on Infinite Earths and Stargirl have shown the new multiverse has Earths with doppelgangers of pre-Crisis Earths/Earth Prime. Post-Crisis Earth-96 has Brandon Routh's Superman. Post-Crisis Earth-2 has John Wesley Shipp's Jay Garrick.

 

I really liked the finale. Yes, we knew Superman was going to get his powers back but that was one of the best Superman "hero moments" of the show. It was fantastic to see Superman "level up", his suit glistening with raw solar energy, unmerge Ally with one single punch and then fly around the earths and unmerge them single-handedly. WOW. I always love seeing Superman show his true power and just being that true hero that saves the world.

Sam's line "I’ve been working for the DOD for a long time. I’ve seen things you would not believe — glimpses of other worlds, and the leagues of superheroes they have on them. And even though we only have your father on this planet, thank God that we do, because he’s the finest of any Earth." is one of the best lines on the show so far. It always great to acknowledge that Superman is the finest of them all!

I also loved the scene where Clark and his family go out to sea and he creates a new fortress of solitude. Very nice touch!

I also glad that hopefully the drama with Lucy is over. I am also glad that the drama between Jordan and Sarah is over. I was kinda hoping that Kyle and Lana would get back together, especially after we saw that nice reunion when Kyle comes back from the bizarro world.

 

So what’s the deal with the Superman on Earth Prime? What’s he been up to?

 

Enjoyed the season, enjoyed the finale, happy to have the show finally make it explicit about superheroes so that hopefully no more "Why isn't X helping?!" ...though I doubt it somehow.

 

Well he’s a mutant from Marvel so that’s why he isn’t helping

 

Ugh, where do I begin? This finale was so dumb in so many ways. So Clark has been stripped of his powers, he's essentially human... and yet he's able to float casually in the vacuum of space, stare into the Sun at close range without going blind and burning to death, and converse with Tal-Rho?????? Are we in a 1980s cartoon universe where there's air in space? We must be, since Jordan could hear Tal screaming when Ally attacked him in space.

Also, where exactly was BizarroParasiteAlly? At first, she was depicted as being in space above Earth, so that Tal and Jordan could just fly up there and then fall back, but the Ironses had to fly through the portal to reach Ally in the void between universes. The story directly contradicted itself on where Ally was.

And what the hell happened at the climax? Superman flies around the merging Earths a few times and punches the ground, and somehow that magically fixes everything? That makes about as much sense as that time in the comics when Superboy Prime rebooted reality by punching a wall between universes.

Then there's the whole Miracle Monday celebration. Okay, nice to see a nod to the concept from the classic Elliot S! Maggin novel and comics. But when is this celebration happening? Apparently it's shortly after the climactic events, judging from the conversations, but how did the town get all these festivities organized on the same day as the "miracle" itself? Wouldn't it make more sense for the first Miracle Monday to be on the one-year anniversary?

This has been a bad, disappointing, frustrating season all around. And it's compounded by the revelation that the show has never been on Earth Prime, that we haven't even been following the same Superman and Lois we grew attached to in Supergirl and the crossovers. That leaves me feeling cheated. Okay, yeah, that accounts for the inconsistencies, but it feels like a betrayal of our expectations, especially since they hid it from us until now. I mean, why the hell wouldn't DC let the show reveal it before? Keeping it secret just feels like a mean trick, a lie of omission. And it clearly wasn't the original plan, given Diggle's appearance last season. They should've decided up front which way to go and stuck with it. (It's also unfair to the editors of the Arrowverse Wiki, who have a lot of rewriting to do now.)

And to compound it, the way it was revealed felt so clumsy and tacked on. There was no good reason for Sam Lane to bring up alternate Earths at that particular moment. It was totally random and forced, obviously just inserted to address the continuity issue. Really, really awkward and artificial writing.

At this point, the only reason I have to keep watching is that I still like Hoechlin, Tulloch, and some of the other cast members. But I'm disappointed, even hurt, to learn that they aren't playing the Superman and Lois I wanted to see a show about.

 

So, in yet another example of incompetency from the showrunners, S&L are cut from any direct interaction with the other series' history & characters (more to the point, actors from cancelled CW/DC series who moved on to other jobs, and/or no longer care to participate in a CW/DC series), limiting any idea of world with at least a few, non-Smallville based heroes. Continuity be damned.
The link was a load of crap from Helbing, since the entire 1st season was produced with no attempt to set this series in a different reality/universe than the rest of the Arrowverse, nor have they explained away SM's appearances on Supergirl, or Diggle--the same Diggle seen throughout the Arrowverse--who appeared on this series.

Oh well--the biggest upside is that Helbing's statement has no connection to or retroactive influence on Black Lightning, the only great CW/DC series.

 

It was pretty clear after a while that this was a different Earth from the other Arrowverse shows, so I don't really understand why it was some big secret until last night.

One thing I've been trying to figure out lately is if the Kent's farm is an actual active farm, we've gotten references to doing farm chores, and this week we saw them working on a tractor, but I don't remember if we've seen them actually planting or harvesting anything. And they've got hay bales sitting around the barn, but we haven't seen any animals in the barn or anywhere else.
I think they've had cows in some of the comics, and I think we did see some animals on the farm in Smallville.

As for the finale, I really enjoyed it.
I was a little surprised after all the build up they dealt with Ally so quickly, but way they did it with the supercharged Superman hitting her so hard she split apart, was pretty cool. Same thing with him hitting the ground so hard it split the Earths apart, yeah it was a little silly, but in an appropriately comic booky way.
I am glad they seem to have had Lana deal with her issues with the Kents, and that Jordan and Sarah are hopefully getting back together.
I was a little surprised they didn't have Lana and Kyle get back together, but it was kind of nice to see one relationship that was just perfectly repaired. I still expect them to end up back together at some point.
This had to be one of the most visually impressive Arrowverse episodes we've ever gotten, there was some really cool imagery with the Earths merging towards the end, and the new Fortress coming out of the ocean was really cool too.

 

So turns out Superman had a secret identity after all, that he's from another Earth! lol Gotta say as someone who has mentioned this since the beginning it's nice to hear it confirmed. Perhaps not coincidental that it's in an episode about keeping and revealing secrets.

 

I really hope them not telling us right away this was a different Earth wasn't a cynical manipulation to get people only interested in this connecting to the Multiverse to tune in.

 

Clark being the only superhero on this Earth totally works for me. I mean, I kind of regret the loss of Kara, but it isn't like Benoist was likely to show up anyway. And multiversal crossovers are still a possibility if they ever really wanted to go there.

I enjoyed the finale a lot, after a season that had its challenges compared to the show's near-perfect debut year. I especially liked the imagery surrounding the merging Earths. It was appropriately bizarre, disorienting, and surreal, and effectively conveyed a genuine sense of the apocalyptic. I loved the shot of Lois standing alone in the middle of the burning street with her Earth hanging huge in the sky above, terrifyingly near and yet all too distant.

 

So, why hasn't 'our' Supes been helping Flash and Batwoman the last 2 years???

 

I haven't even watched Superman & Lois, and yet I vehemently disagree.

The entire point of doing this show in the first place was supposed to be the fact that it starred Hoechlin and Tulloch as their Earth-38/Earth Prime characters, so for the showrunners to quietly change that but not bother informing viewers until nearly 2 seasons into the show is a massive bait-and-switch, especially when you then add in their half-baked handwavey excuse for how/why David Ramsey guest-starred as John Diggle.

 

Clear in what way? The showrunners never laid out who lives in what reality, etc., and as noted, SM--up until this season finale--was assumed to be the same one who appeared on Supergirl, while Diggle is supposed to the same one viewers knew all along. The showrunners pulled this decision out of their collective asses in a weak attempt to explain why certain DC characters will never appear on this series.

Hitting the ground to split the earth...that was as scatterbrained an idea as the worst of the Weisinger era of Superman comics.

 

I don't watch those shows so this is a legit question...is there anything to suggest that Superman still exists there? (Apart from Kara's backstory, of course.) Maybe he moved to his own universe after Crisis? That probably can't work, but I'm curious if Clark has been mentioned explicitly at all since.

 

There's zero reason there can't simultaneously be Earth-Prime Superman and Lois, and Earth-S&L Superman and Lois, both of whom look and sound like Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch (respectively). It's not remotely complicated or confusing in genre terms. It's Multiverse 101.